Nope, this isn’t some GMO-happy alternate reality. This is the future of your food—because indoor farming is about to blow up. In fact, some experts say that it already has. Governments are offering tax breaks to big conglomerates who invest in indoor farms—Toshiba, Panasonic, and Goldman Sachs have already funded operations in Japan, Singapore, and New Jersey, respectively. Meanwhile, researchers at Texas A&M; University have developed self-sustaining indoor farms that fit inside stackable shipping containers but can still pump out more than 60,000 plants per year. At this summer’s World’s Fair in Milan, America’s pavilion—an exhibit representing the entire country’s accomplishments—is modeled after an indoor farm. We’re not talking about old-school greenhouses here. Today’s indoor farms (also known as vertical farms if they’re at least two stories tall) are highly optimized plant factories that feed crops with LED lights instead of sunlight and that are built in engineered stacking systems for maximum space efficiency. Indoor farmers bypass the need to fertilize and maintain nutrient-rich soil by eliminating soil altogether. Instead, they feed plants directly via one of three techniques: hydroponically, with roots dangling into a nutrient-enriched water solution; aquaponically, with roots dangling into fish tanks and plants feeding on fish byproducts; or aeroponically, where plants are misted with nutrient-infused water. MORE: The Only Food Label That’s Worth the Extra Cash Before you sneer, mount your high horse, and trot off to buy some soil-crusted veggies from the farmer’s market, we have a message: Get over yourself. “You want to eat local, and you want to support local farmers, but tell me, what do you eat between November and May? Prepared foods, frozen vegetables, and fresh vegetables that all come from Chile?” asks Dickson Despommier, PhD, professor of microbiology and public health at Columbia University and author of The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century. “It’s nice to want the Currier and Ives picture of living in America during the 19th century when the good earth was the good earth,” he adds. “But the good earth isn’t so good anymore.” That’s because the good earth is, literally, eroding from beneath us. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization recently reported that more than a third of the world’s soil has significantly degraded due to chemical-heavy farming and is continuing to erode at a rate of 30 soccer fields per minute. This has caused both nutrient-poor soil (and, consequently, nutrient-poor plants) and huge losses in the amount of usable farmland left on earth. Both are bad news as far as how we’ll feed the world’s skyrocketing population. “In traditional farming, the cost of goods keeps on rising due to climate change and external factors—droughts and other things that farmers can’t really control,” says Mark Thomann, CEO of Farmed Here, an indoor farming operation in Illinois. “I get asked the same question over and over again: How do you feed 9 billion people by 2050?” Indoor farming could help meet our global food demands in a way traditional farming can’t: An acre of indoor farm is as productive as 10 acres of traditional farmland and uses at least 70 percent less water. It eliminates the variable of bad weather. Many indoor farmers obviate pesticides, using natural predators like ladybugs to deal with the few pest problems they experience. And by removing the possibility of contamination from animals, runoff, or manure, it nearly squashes the threat of foodborne illnesses like listeria. MORE: Sabra Recalls 30,000 Cases of Hummus The resulting produce is also fresher than the stuff you’re buying from California and Chile in midwinter. Milan Kluko, owner of Michigan-based Green Spirit Farms, one of the country’s first indoor vertical farms, says his farm typically delivers produce to retailers within 5 hours of harvest—one reason he says his veggies taste better than conventional, soil-grown varieties (although some culinary experts have shunned hydroponics as subpar in the past). While there’s scant research on whether plants grown indoors are more nutrient-rich than their outdoor counterparts—that answer depends on nutrients present in soil or other growing solution, which can vary widely case by case—Green Spirit’s produce is consistently as cheap or slightly cheaper than organic veggies from California. All this doesn’t mean every farmer should uproot and go inside: Many agricultural experts are wary of the entire indoor farming concept. The National Organic Standards Board has urged the USDA to prohibit many indoor growing systems from being able to call themselves organic because they forgo soil (and the billions of critically important microorganims that live inside it) in favor of synthetic nutrient solutions. Farmers like Dave Chapman, owner of Long Wind Farm in Vermont and leader of a petition called Keep the Soil in Organic, agree. “It seems a little nuts,” he says. “To take all solar energy out and use only fossil fuel—that doesn’t make sense to me. It’s a tremendous carbon footprint.” High-tech indoor farms do depend heavily on electricity. One analysis from Cornell University conjectured that growing just one kilogram of lettuce in an indoor farm with 100% artificial light releases about 8 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere. Compare this to the same amount of lettuce shipped from California to New York, which emits only 0.7 pounds of CO2, the report says. But indoor farmers argue that their carbon footprint is offset by other eco-friendly practices, like efficient LED lighting, a lack of chemical fertilizers or herbicides, and reduced water usage. “I can almost guarantee you that in 10 years, all of the major industries in the food business will be converting vertical farms,” Despommier says. It’s a bold prediction, but there are still hurdles for indoor farming to overcome. Staples like wheat and corn still aren’t being grown indoors, and most indoor farms are not yet profitable. There’s also a balance to achieve with farmers who still do things the soil way. The indoor farmers we spoke with aren’t looking to chase those traditional farmers out of their communities. Green Spirit Farms, for example, does not sell peppers or tomatoes in the summer, instead leaving that business to local soil-based farmers. MORE: The Crafty Way Whole Foods Is Forcing Farms to Grow Clean Will you see an indoor farm in your neighborhood anytime soon? Probably, as more investors enter the arena to help farms become commercially viable. Green Spirit Farms is already expanding to Ohio, West Virginia, and Detroit, and assessing potential locations in Brooklyn and Omaha. Farmed Here will increase its distribution from 70 retailers to more than 400 by the end of this year. Ready or not, the concept’s taking root—in a bath of nutrient-infused water, of course.
